This post is a mirror of https://text.causal.agency/001-make.txt.

Let’s talk about make(1). I think an important thing to know about make(1) is that you don’t need to write a Makefile to use it. There are default rules for C, C++ and probably Fortran. To build foo from foo.c, just run:

make foo

The default rule for C files uses the CFLAGS variable, so you can set that in the environment to pass flags to the C compiler:

CFLAGS=-Wall make foo

It also uses LDLIBS for linking, so you can add libraries with:

LDLIBS=-lcurses make foo

Obviously writing this every time would become tedious, so it might be time to write a Makefile. But it really doesn’t need much:

CFLAGS += -Wall -Wextra
LDLIBS = -lcurses

foo:

Assigning CFLAGS with ‘+=’ preserves the system default or anything passed in the environment. Declaring foo as the first rule makes it the default when ‘make’ is run without a target. Note that the rule doesn’t need a definition; the default will still be used.

If foo is built from serveral source files, unfortunately a rule definition is required:

OBJS = foo.o bar.o baz.o

foo: $(OBJS)
	$(CC) $(LDFLAGS) $(OBJS) $(LDLIBS) -o $@

This rule uses LDFLAGS for passing linker flags, which is what the default rule does. The ‘$@’ variable here expands to ‘foo’, so this rule can be copied easily for other binary targets.

If some sources depend on a header file, they can be automatically rebuilt when the header changes by declaring a dependency rule:

foo.o bar.o: foo.h

Note that several files can appear either side of the ‘:’.

Lastly, it’s always nice to add a clean target:

clean:
	rm -f $(OBJS) foo

I hope this helps getting started with make(1) without writing too much Makefile!

Examples

The example Makefile in its entirety:

CFLAGS += -Wall -Wextra
LDLIBS = -lcurses
OBJS = foo.o bar.o baz.o

foo: $(OBJS)
	$(CC) $(LDFLAGS) $(OBJS) $(LDLIBS) -o $@

foo.o bar.o: foo.h

clean:
	rm -f $(OBJS) foo